High Concept or High Quality:A multimodal analysis of claims-making in conflict coverage promotional spots of Al Jazeera English and CNN International

Masters Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Communications - Journalism, Journalism Professions, grade: Distinction, Swansea University, course: Erasmus Mundus M.A. in Journalism, Media and Globalization (War and Conflict), language: English, abstract: Since the 1970s, commercial pressures on news media organizations have increased and as a result, television news networks have started to adapt marketing and product differentiation strategies from the Hollywood movie industry. So today, even the war and conflict coverage of 24-hour news networks is subject to heavy promotion and part of the networks advertising and branding campaigns. These commercial aspects of news production, however, seem to oppose concepts of journalistic quality. Conflict coverage promotion and image spots of 24-hour news networks therefore pose a great opportunity to investigate a phenomenon at the cross-roads of both commercial entertainment television and quality journalism. This study analyses claims of journalistic quality and high concept in these spots and how they are linked to better understand the ideological complexes of CNN International and Al Jazeera English. The findings show an equal number of quality and high concept claims with differences in the nature of the claims between the two networks. The way the claims are distributed throughout the modes of visual, voice, sound and music, as well as the way they are linked within and across modes, however, show very similar patterns. These patterns exist for quality and high concept claims as well as for both 24-hour television news networks. The largest number of claims appears in the visual mode. The research also shows that analysing this kind of media text needs to be multimodal and that a social semiotic approach is appropriate for analysing claims-making and linking in conflict coverage promotional spots.